The pursuit of sadness

Have you ever experienced such a feeling that by each passing moment it feels like something is terribly missing? Something isn’t right. Have you ever faced this miserable –sinful feeling that everyone around you is in a situation just because of you.

I am in such a phase for the past few days. I know I am committing a crime. It’s only my musing power that has gone beyond its acceptable limit and is the culprit of my pitiful condition.  I prefer to remain silent, full of self guilt, confused, in a state of emptiness, hopelessness.. ..Simply sad (you can imagine any bollywood movie scene) losing my beautiful life’s battle to my worries and fear. It’s so easy to fall into feelings of despair.

 Why am I like this…One day I am so cheerful and happy like a sunshine, the other day sad, crying, despair  ? (cut short chinta mani)

Sadness and happiness are two relative words (oh come on everybody knows this, what’s new?) .We , homosapiens!  Always try to protect ourselves from sadness, run away from the things that have the potential to hit back at us, make us feel as if we are powerless to change these circumstances.  It’s an irony; we worry and fear for things that make us happy. We remain in doubt whether they will happen. Why don’t we simply make them happen? 

It’s our time, It’s our life, we can do what we like, for the price of a smile, why do we cry?

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

I love drama. I am in love with life and have full of emotions. I am a genius of sadness, can immerse myself deeply into it, can separate numerous strands. I am a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum. I am sad; at times I am like this.

Am I sad? Am I in pain? Yes I am. I should be rather grateful, I feel alive . Else , its just work all day, moving from one task to the other . I should be happy, I am alive as a human not a machine. I got a reason to celebrate myself and take a break.

Life is a perfect balance. (Thee has designed it like this way, and how come He can go wrong!) There are two beams which depict two phases of our life in a cyclic way. At a given point of time, only one is heavier.

As per my observations (I haven’t lived even half of average life boosted by experts) One beam is for feelings of joy, confidence, strong self esteem and feeling on cloud 9. Another beam is for despair, a lack of finding meaning/answer/purpose of life. Sometimes walking back home I realize how miraculous is the feeling of being alive and blessed with what a wonderful gift –Life , the most undefined , unwritten , unpredicted and  unknown. There are days when the same path let me wonder about the disasters in an instant ! Money, health, relationships, friends everything (surprisingly, they all go off track together) act like a black hole; pulling me to their indefinite depth and making me lost to nowhere.

In midst of such circumstances we curse God, ‘where is HE  while all this is happening to me? ‘ How many of us have actually got the answer ? The same beautiful, precious Life seems to be a brutal struggle.

There is one more characteristic of Life – it’s uncertain. We often tend to forget this. It’s our mistake not His.

Sometimes we do not achieve what we set out to do, or something we have had or achieved is taken from us. When the world about us changes, particularly if it is sudden or dramatic, we must adapt to everything. The world is then not what we thought. We are not what we thought we were.. The old picture has been taken away, the old world we knew  that gave us comfort is gone, there is no choice but to form a new world, a new picture of how we think things are.

 

Stay Happy , keep smilling 🙂

Saakshi

PS :  “Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
― Brian Jacques, Taggerung

 

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I See

My Toastmasters Speech – Project 2

I See

Seen people with spectacles? –

Fancy frames thick / thin lenses.

Well, there are so many like this in this room, even I am wearing my secondary eyes. You must be thinking simply how silly the question was!

Never mind, we all know an optician makes these spectacles, based on test results either done by himself or a qualified eye doctor, in medical terms an optometrist. The idea is to make the person wearing these see with clarity, taking away any lack of appropriate focussedness.

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings for the day, I hope, I wish you all, be in best of your health (coz somehow I am not) , in best of your spirits and on the top having best of your vision.

My question to you is, do we need just clarity of vision?  I consulted my doctor 6 months back and got my numbers corrected. But will these pair of glasses ensure that I will see things correctly, if my mind is filled with prejudice and close mindedness. Will I be able to keep up with the pace with so many intellectual people around, even if I choose to keep a narrow outlook?

The answer is an obvious- NO. This restrictedness of not one’s eye sight but one’s vision distorts ones perception and brings in a refractive error.  

We are all the prisoners of our own perceptions. I have a short story about the results of being locked up behind the bars of worry, doubt and fear or better to say a chained mind of its own perception.

I walked around the counter at Mc Donald’s to get a straw for my drink and found a woman frantically mopping up her spilled coffee. She was using the flimsy tissue paper that was used for wrapping burger so the mopping up process wasn’t working well. I reached for the napkins and started helping her. She looked up in surprise that I had found the napkins saying that she had looked for them but didn’t see them. Her comment was “I couldn’t see.”

She was right. She couldn’t see Why not? Because of her present state of mind, she might have panicked or been in a hurry, and this blocked her vision. She was not able to see the napkins that were kept in plain sight. It was a state of mind of “worry, rush, and fear.”
In the prison of our own perceptions, we can’t see for what we are looking, fear motivates our actions. Each of us has our own personal prison created out of all that we have been taught and accepted about the worldview. Perception does rule!

For example if someone inquires what time it is. My hands rush to my mobile phone. I don’t care that I am wearing a nice watch.

Let’s have another example how many time have you searched for your glasses and found it at place least expected, your head.

 Or what do you think is the reason behind biased political views and favoritism. Many times our upbringing, our thought patterns rule our decision making and views. We behave as if we are not able to see. As a matter of fact, we do not, if our mind is blocked with obstacles.  Many a times, the uniqueness of the system in which we are caught, forces us to see erroneously. Our unsymmetrical upbringing, different backgrounds, may prohibit us from seeing clearly. In the struggle between reality and perception, most of the times, it is the latter that emerges paramount.

Folks,  “Our Perception magnifies things that we believe in”

 Let’s all break out of prison now!

I am a Business Analyst my job is to first ask questions, get the answers and then start working on them.

I have one more question to you. Look at the below picture.

These are two horizontal lines.

Horizontal lines

Which one is longer?

Many of you may find the above one longer. But, you will be surprised to know that, both are equivalent in length.

My perception says, the first denotes the open mind when you are able to see broad horizons and the second, a closed, restricted, narrow mind. So in the end, I am repeating myself, Perception Rules!

Lastly I would get a smile, when someone from the audience says, “I see”, as an acknowledgement of my speech. It’s a relief that we all share same perception J

Anger is one short of Danger

To ‘ one’  world, I am better known as rude, harsh, cold, stubborn, hard headed, short tempered snobbish lady. For them, may be, I am. Frustrations, anger and irritations are the demons, which surround me (not sure, us) and haunt me (At least, yes, to me) time to time.

Once upon a time on one fine day, which was not like just another day , I was suffering from anger , due to some unexpected conversations with a  good (I mean it) friend. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in midst of such sentimental attack;  I was still free ; free to hate the things that hurt me;  free to disconnect the phone and acknowledge my anger;  free to louder the music (free – for the matter of fact my neighbors are out for holidays)  and just dance like a emotion-free , stress-free, tiredness-free mad girl. I am still free to hate the moments that were torturing me, or to forgive me.

It doesn’t sound like much!

I know.

But in the flinch and bite of the solitude (hate to call, loneliness) , (self) locked in the confines of a small room , echoes of highway midnight traffic , what’s all I have got is freedom. I read this somewhere; freedom is like, universe of possibilities.

I am not that kind of person who can talk at length about negativity (they give me a sick feeling). Rather, I am the kind of person who in spite being red hot in anger will think of possibilities to come out with a little more than the wiser and calmer me, there should be (has to be) some gain out of it.

If you search on anger management on internet, you will find a very long list of remedies. Drinking lots of water, meditation, taking a nap, talking/yelling to/at a friend, maintain a silence, count till ten, deep breathes etc etc. Perhaps they may work or even may not, like in my case, nothing like this, I believe one has to find out the fixtures on their own (they depend person to person, affinity to affinity).

Below are the remedies for anger control, which I follow.

( Note: Please don’t blindly follow them, think before you do.)

1.       Dance

Take away points – Burn calories, Toned body , major stress relief for calmer and focused me.

Losing points – You can try this if and only if you are at home and music volume should be convenient to neighbors.

2.       Walk to the nearest mall.

Take away points – Everybody knows the benefits of walking. I mention walking to the nearest mall for those who are shopaholics. Every time I visit any shopping mall, I get to listen Enrique Iglesias (hearing him is always soothing).

Losing points – Keep the minimum amount of cash with you and please leave cards at home.

3.       Shop

The moment you have read the word ‘shop’ you have imagined yourself with bags full of clothes, footwear, accessories etc. Stop those imaginary horses there only. When in anger, you have have to shop smarty. Otherwise your pockets/credit card bills will make sure to provide you another shot of anger.

Take away points – Shop for groceries , bed linens , books , music…chances are there would be little wastage and they will be in use for long. For bed linen, I can anytime gift them.

Losing Points – If the anger meter is at alarming rate, skip shopping and enjoy movie.

 

4.       Write

Take away points – Twitter , Facebook , Blogs, Personal documents describe a groundbreaker and game changer. I can never let myself down.

Losing Points – In anger or in whatever scenario, don’t ever, disrespect/abuse/spread bad word for the cause of anger. Every coin has two sides, respect that.

 

5.       Interact

Take away points –I Interact to enrich my social network of peers, colleagues, even my competitors. My willingness to listen and learn (Running away from the reason, why I am so upset) from all the people I interact, help me to be a better person.

Losing Points – Mind your words and tone.

 

Earlier in my teenage and early 20 days (again, guessing my age !! bad idea) I used to break things, at times yell in a screaming-itchy-irky  tone and have a compulsive eating disorder. With anger I was in danger.

Now, with a bit of life experience and a blessed happening life (frequent in –out) I have learnt this in a hard way that anger is one short of danger. And I am happy to announce I have found my , one short.

 

Keep Cool,

Saakshi